No country can find eternal peace and comfort where the vote of Judas Iscariot is as good as the vote of the Saviour of mankind.

Friend, hast thou considered the "rugged, all-nourishing earth," as Sophocles well names her; how she feeds the sparrow on the housetop, much more her darling man?

Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do.

Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a taxing-machine; to the contented, a machine for securing property. Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.

A collection of books is the best of all universities.

There is in man a higher than love of happiness; he can do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness.

It is now almost my sole rule of life to clear myself of cants and formulas, as of poisonous Nessus shirts.